Candler man arrested in Walmart stalking case

Ryan Scot Davis, 48, was charged with taking indecent liberties with a child following an incident at the Waynesville Walmart on Saturday, Nov. 24.

Waynesville police suspect that Davis is the same man who Saturday stalked an 11-year-old girl around Walmart. Posing as a security guard investigating a theft, Davis allegedly led the child to a prearranged area, accused her of stealing and asked the young girl to remove her clothes. When the child refused, the perpetrator released her.

Police were able to piece together what happened using video surveillance tapes from Walmart and later released a picture of the suspect to the public, asking people to come forward and help identify the man.

The Waynesville Police Department received several tips from callers, naming Davis as a suspect, and upon investigation, police found enough probable cause to believe that Davis was indeed the man they were looking for.

Davis is already listed on the Sex Offender Registry. He previously spent six years in prison for taking indecent liberties with a child in Henderson County in 2000.

Hollingsed stated that the circumstances of the 2000 incident are very similar to those that took place at Walmart in Waynesville on Saturday.

Buncombe County police arrested Davis at 11:30 p.m. Nov. 27 at his home on Harkins Cove Road in Candler. He is being held at the Haywood County Detention Center under a $100,000 secured bond.

The full list of charges is: second-degree kidnapping, indecent liberties with a child and assault on a child under 12. All three are felonies.

Reading Room

Like some other readers I know, my taste in books these last 20 years or so has shifted from fiction to non-fiction, especially history, biography, and literary studies. I still follow certain novelists — Anne Tyler, Pat Conroy, James Lee Burke, and others — and still review novels for this paper, but find that works of fiction simply don’t appeal as much as when I was in my twenties and thirties, when I read stacks of novels and poetry.